What is an Original Print?

What Is A Print?
Printmaking: The Historical Background by Carl Zigrosser

The professional printer has been more consistently employed in lithography than in the other graphic media. Even today relatively few artists print their own lithographs. This may be due partly to the fact that a lithographic press is cumbersome and would occupy a large space in an artist's studio, but chiefly to the fact that quality in printing is dependent upon manual manipulation and intangibles of long experience. One cannot learn much about lithographic printing from a technical manual. Therefore, throughout the history of lithography, prints have been considered originals and in fact great masterpieces, even though they were not printed by the artist — Goya's Bullfights, for example, or the color lithographs of Toulouse-Lautrec. In making a lithograph it is possible for an artist to draw not only on stone or a metal plate but also on a piece of paper from which the design can be transferred to the stone by a skilled printer. The practice of transfer printing dates back to Senefelder's example, but some purists claim that prints made by this method are not originals but reproductions. The issue was settled once and for all in a celebrated libel suit, instituted by Pennell and Whistler against Walter Sickert in 1897 in reply to an article in the Saturday Review. Sickert had argued that to pass off drawings on paper as lithographs was misleading "to the purchaser on the vital point of commercial value." After a parade of distinguished witnesses and the citation of historical evidence, a verdict was found against Sickert, and transfer lithographs were established as legitimate original prints. Usually the artist, after the transfer has been made, continues to work on the stone. One use of the transfer does lead to questionable practices, namely when the finished drawing on a stone is transferred to another stone solely for the purpose of making a large edition. Some of Whistler's lithographs appeared in publications — The Studio, The Albemarle, The Art Journal, for example. Whistler's original drawing on stone was transferred to other stones for the production of the necessarily large editions. Whatever quality the hand proofs might have had vanished in the mechanical printing; and such prints on mediocre paper may properly be called reproductions though they sometimes pass for originals.

The technique known as offset lithographic printing poses a special problem. The design is not printed from the stone or plate directly, but from a rubber blanket which has picked up the inked image from the lithograph plate attached to a cylinder — a double printing, as it were. It is a process which eliminates rolling up by hand in the interests of speed and quantity printing. It therefore is a border line case more slanted toward reproductive than toward original production. But occasionally an artist (Charlot, for example) has drawn lithographs with this process definitely in mind, and has thereby created charming and effective original prints. Offset has also been used, in combination with other media (by Hayter and others) to add touches of color to color prints.

The silk screen stencil medium has been adapted for artists' use within the last twenty-five years. A number of artists who make original prints in the medium have decided to call them serigraphs to distinguish them from commercial silk screen reproductions. The process has also been used in conjunction with other mediums for the production of original color prints.

There are cases where a print was only partially executed by the artist, with assistance from other sources. May such works be classified as original prints? Corot, being primarily a painter and not a professional etcher, had trouble with the biting of his plates. In the etching Souvenir d'Italie his friend Bracquemond performed that service for him, no doubt with the collaboration of the artist, who, of course, drew the design on the copper. Such an etching is usually considered an original print. When Rouault was working on his series Miserere, photogravure plates were made of the preliminary drawings. These plates were then re-worked with burin, drypoint, acquatint, and the like, by the artist himself. Since the photomechanical work was transformed or incorporated in the artist’s own handling, the finished product may properly be regarded as an original print. Cézanne, who likewise was primarily a painter and not a professional printmaker, drew a composition Bathers on a stone. From a trial proof colored by Cézanne in water color, the printer made color separations and prepared stones for further printing to produce the color lithograph. This print, greatly esteemed by collectors, may be rated as more than half original, since the supplementary work was done under the artist's supervision, and was based on a model made expressly for the purpose. On the other hand, to cite an extreme case, a famous artist brings to a lithograph printer a completely finished gouache, made with no particular thought of its use as a lithograph and with a treatment appropriate to the gouache medium. He leaves it with the printer as the maquette for the production of a color lithograph. He does not perform any of the steps of the production himself, and furthermore the model he furnishes is not executed in a style adaped to the lithograph medium for which it is destined. The finished lithograph, duly signed by the artist, can be regarded only as a reproductive print. The technician, who translated the composition to stone, also deserves some recognition for his share in the final product.

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Copyright © 1961 Print Council of America
Used with permission.